Wild: The Appendices
by Cheerie Mai
Summary: She has forgiven and forgotten, she has put up with his bad temper and bad past, she has dealt with his arrogance and his impatience, she has picked him up off the floor all those drunken, miserable nights.


Ultima have mercy, he's done it again. He damns this perpetual nausea to the deepest, darkest, most tortuous flaming pits of Hell. Perhaps he ought to take her advice and just go see a doctor. But he hates doctors. They have no respect for personal space and this evokes very unpleasant memories. After all, it might not be so bad if all his doctors had been female, but he's come to terms with the fact that the Gods hate him. Honestly, he hadn't meant to give the last physician a black eye. But when someone who is not young, pretty and _extremely_ female touches him _there_ in a very inappropriate manner, he decides that it's a very legitimate knee-jerk reaction. It wasn't even supposed to be a physical exam. Fran had dragged him by his shirt collar and literally thrown him into the waiting room before asking that he be seen by a doctor. Something about his shoulder being dislocated. He'll admit that it hurt like a _fucking bitch_, but _dislocated_? That was pushing it.

A doctor had arrived in the room not two minutes after Fran had stalked off to the front desk. He assumed that was the reason why. When an irate Fran asks for a doctor, you'd better damn well give her a doctor, _really fast_. But _fast_ doesn't always mean _quality_, and taking one look at this young man, Balthier understood the truth in this. And after being instructed to strip down and change into a hospital gown when this was _supposed_ to be just a simple diagnosis of his 'dislocated shoulder', and then having his privates fondled, he has come to the conclusion that men like that should _not _become doctors. In fact, he thinks they should be barred from the profession entirely, because as far as he knows, feeling up your patients is not in the code of conduct. Oh dear, he should have known better than to reopen that can of worms. He vomits again out of the sheer temporarily relived repulsion.

"Balthier?" he hears her soft, placid voice just outside the bathroom door. "Are you well?"

He retches yet again. No, no he is not.

He wasn't aware that throwing up one's own liver was considered healthy. More stomach bile escapes his lips. He really needs to stop thinking things like that.

The door slides open and she enters without permission, somehow untroubled as he continues to empty the contents of his stomach into the toilet, which happens to be very little or nothing at all. He wishes she would have at least asked before coming in, as he now feels very self-conscious of his no doubt disheveled appearance. He belatedly wonders why this _always_ happens to him.

She simply stands there, towering over him seeing as he's down on his knees hunched over the toilet vomiting up his own insides. The glimpses of her face he can snag between bouts of puking are unruffled and indifferent, and he subconsciously wonders - being too focused on making sure his coagulated small intestine makes it _in_ the toilet bowl - how she can manage. After a long, quiet moment of listening to himself retch, he knows exactly what is coming.

"You should see a doctor."

While he will never tire of listening to her lovely melodic voice, he often hates what it actually says.

"No," he growls before gagging roughly and throwing up once again.

"It's not worth the trouble," he finishes weakly.

"It would seem you have the flu."

"Right," he vomits again, "which would explain why you haven't caught it yet."

After he's sworn that was his liquified pancreas that just splashed into the toilet, he looks up and finds her with an expression on her face that seems to say, 'Do I even need to answer that?'

He leans back over the toilet. There goes his left kidney, but at least you technically only need one to survive. Though now he might need a liver and small intestine transplant, which he's not even entirely sure they offer.

"Right. Viera."

"I will be waiting at the dock when you are finished."

He spits into the toilet before grinning at her with closed lips, half afraid there might chunks of internal organ caught in his teeth, "But you'd make a lovely doctor, Fran."

He certainly wouldn't mind _her_ giving him a good grope.

She seems to catch his implication and glowers softly, "I am no physician, Balthier."

"I'm sure you're far better than the last man I very unfortunately got landed with."

Oh no, he thinks he feels his other kidney making its way up his esophagus. Damn, he still needed that.

"Nor do I have the skills to diagnose you, or prescribe an antibiotic," she reasons firmly.

"Oh, I'm sure you know some centuries-old Viera salve that would cure me in an instant."

He hopes she doesn't take that as an insult to her age, but from the hostile look in her eyes, she does.

"You are far better suited to see a professional," she tells him, clearly not in the mood to compromise.

She turns to exit the small bathroom, her silent, yet blatant way of telling him to hurry his ass up because she isn't going to change her mind. As she disappears down the hall, he almost thinks of shouting after her 'No', but in his current, organ-less state, he decides that doing so would simply be risking the few vitals he has left, and then some. Although, he wonders if he's actually got that much to lose after all. But the masochist in him thinks he likes the way Fran pushes him around.

Most men would call him 'thoroughly whipped', but he likes to think of it as 'biding his time'.


End file.
